


A Slight Fabrication

by gardnerhill



Category: Puppet Holmes (Web Series), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, The Muppets - All Media Types
Genre: Adorable John Watson, BAMF Mrs. Hudson, Community: holmestice, Crack, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Muppet References, Not Canon Compliant, Puppets, Story: A Case of Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:42:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21535408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: One of the purposes of fanfiction is to right wrongs committed in Canon.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson
Comments: 12
Kudos: 29
Collections: Holmestice Exchange - Winter 2019





	A Slight Fabrication

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sanguinity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinity/gifts).



> Spookhouse Theater made three [Puppet!Holmes](https://www.facebook.com/pg/Holmesverse/videos/) shorts. Their location on the Facebook page is spotty. Fortunately they can also be currently found on YouTube here: [Episode 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFWGr6ah_h0), [Episode 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQEZ3hrCJCc) and [Episode 3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqUxE9qMP1k). 
> 
> For the purposes of this story, I've decided that the Spookhouse Puppet!Holmes 'verse is the same one in which Jim Henson's Muppets and the puppet characters in the TV show [Greg the Bunny](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280257) live and work.

Watson took one look at Miss Mary Sutherland and fell completely under her spell in a matter of seconds. I had to physically restrain him throughout my attempt to hear my client's story. 

I should not have been surprised. A person of flesh may vacillate on the sidewalk when matters of the heart are at stake, but John Watson is a man true to his fabric, as impulsive in love as he was in combat (where he served as the sole fabricated-Englishman in his regiment). I could see that, even in her anxious state, Miss Sutherland gravitated toward Watson's kind words and voice. 

However, there was no more we could do, for just then I solved her case. Not merely the fact that Mary Sutherland's beau was of a similar height to her stepfather (the difference easily explained by a slight hunch), but the identical typewriting quirks shown in both Miss Sutherland's advertisement and the love letter by "Hosmer Angel" pointed straight to the woman's young stepfather deceiving her to ensure she stayed home and unmarried, pining for her lost love – whilst leaving him free to access (pillage, more accurately) her £100 annuity. Miss Sutherland had suffered a grotesque and cruel deception at the hands of her wicked and greedy relative. All we two could do was stand apart and watch the poor deluded woman weep bitterly. 

"Watson. Watson, Watson!" Once again I had to hold my friend back from dashing up to Miss Sutherland. I judged the move ill-timed, and also feared that Watson's natural impulsiveness would be misread by Miss Sutherland; eagerness and openness are common traits among those of us who are fabricated, but such are often misread as rudeness by the staider flesh-folk.

But courting the woman was now the last thing on Watson's mind. He shook with rage, and his moustache was fluffed out like an angry tomcat's back-fur. "The _cad_ , Holmes, the absolute _bounder_! To do such a vile thing to his own family for a little money!"

"I know, old man, I know. Watson. Watson, I know. I know – Watson, stay here, Watson. It is indeed a ghastly thing. But alas, it is not a crime. We may do nothing to the unspeakable Mr. Windibank." 

Miss Sutherland cried harder into her wrung kerchief. She knew that much too. 

Watson broke free of my grip and dashed away, only to reappear seconds later with his Army revolver, waving it about in an alarming manner given his mindset. "By the Lord Henson, I've half a mind to call out that villain, Holmes!" 

"Watson, Watson! Put that away! You know you have trouble holding it after Af—"

The revolver dropped from nerveless fingers and Watson went still, eyes staring blankly for a moment, and I lost no time in pouncing on the dropped weapon. (The mention of that dread locale – very often merely the first syllable – petrifies my friend for a split-second. I am not sorry to say that I regularly take advantage of that particular peculiarity.) Watson started, stared at me and back at the woman, nonplussed as well as disarmed. 

Fortunately the hapless Miss Sutherland was still weeping too copiously to take notice of the minor drama that had just taken place. "What do I do now?" she cried. "Oh, what do I do _now_?"

"Leave the house, you bloody imbecile!" 

Neither Watson nor I had spoken. That garrulous shriek came from above us, but poorly muffled by the floorboards. 

Mary Sutherland started and stared up at the ceiling.

"Oh. Er. That's our landlady," I said quickly, and glared up at the sconce. "Perhaps I should have told you that she can hear everything."

Mrs. Hudson continued to berate my client unseen. "You have a job and £100 a year? Silly girl! Get out! You'll live well enough at a boarding-house, _and_ that barstid don't get your money." 

Watson and I stared up at the ceiling like Miss Sutherland, our mouths agape. But despite the harsh voice, the sense of Mrs. Hudson's words came through. How absurdly simple. "The woman is right, Miss Sutherland," said I. "Leave that abominable household." 

"L-leave?" Miss Sutherland cried. "Leave my mother too?" Fear was in her voice, not just grief. 

I could _feel_ my eyes glittering, and my voice was cold. "Ah, yes, the woman who chose aiding her new husband in this disgusting deception of her own child over protecting you." 

"Leave 'em all!" Mrs. Hudson again. "Make a fresh start. Do you a world of good, silly arse!" 

Our landlady's brassy, scolding tone did more to restore Mary Sutherland's spirit, firm her lips and stiffen her spine than did Watson's outrage or my ice. Her eyes were red and wet (really, such a lot of liquid), but anger was just beginning to burn in those eyes too as the enormity of her stepfather's villainy began to sink in. A prodigious sniff. "You're quite right. Very well, I'll do so. This week." She stood to go. 

"And don't let them know, you silly girl!" Mrs. Hudson bellowed as the young woman left our rooms. 

Watson stared after the closed door for a long time. "She's gone, Holmes."

I patted his shoulder. "Bound to happen, my dear old felt." 

*** 

For several days after the conclusion of that case Watson spent his time moping around the rooms and scribbling the case's details at his desk, when he wasn't resting his chin in his hand and staring out the window. He seemed to have discarded his brief bout of temper at Sutherland's cruel stepfather, but now he was back to mooning over Mary Sutherland herself. 

While I felt for Watson's pining, I was relieved that the case was over and done with and Miss Sutherland was out of our lives forever. While unions between fleshed and fabricated are not unheard-of, they are mildly scandalous and not encouraged as they produce no children (purists of both materials can be fanatical on the subject). Far more important to me, however, was that Miss Sutherland did not strike me as the most perceptive nor intelligent of women no matter her material. The fact that she had been completely duped by the patently false guise her stepfather had assumed did not speak well of her. No false muttonchops, dark glasses and lowered voice would transform Watson into a stranger to me. …Then I remembered how fiercely Watson attacked me as an intruder in our rooms when my disguise consisted solely of a small false moustache, and his attraction to Miss Sutherland made more sense. 

Watson is the one who writes down our cases; I disregard them as past excitement once they are done and gone, and I retreated back into my experiments with either addictive drugs or volatile chemicals. I find my ennui dissipated in a satisfactory manner, whether from the heady rush of cocaine or via an explosion at my chemistry table that sends me flying across our parlour. 

Some days after the denouement of the strange case of the identity of Mary Sutherland's vanished fiancé, a new client called upon us, a redheaded man who looked about thirty years of age and who crossed our doorstep without benefit of calling card. The young man's body language betrayed agitation and his face was grim; bushy red eyebrows were drawn down in a frown over shiny black shoe-button eyes. He stood our very height, looking at both of us – a fellow as fabricated as we were. "Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I must apologise for my forward manner, but I am at my wit's end. My daughter is missing. I need you to find her for me." 

"Oh you poor man," Watson said at once, rising from his writing-desk. "Your little girl! You must be distraught. Come, tell us your name, and we will do our very– " 

"Mr. James Windibank!" I concluded. 

The other two men in the room reacted with violent double-takes at my outburst. Watson was stunned. But the man showed fear as well – his tufted red brows arched high over his gleaming dark eyes. 

I rattled off the deductions I had observed. "The same typewriter-mark ridges on the wrist that Miss Sutherland had displayed, Watson – fainter of course, Mr. Windibank, owing to your material and your less-frequent use of the device to create the false love-letters from 'Hosmer Angel' to your adult stepdaughter, Mary. There is also the new wedding ring on your hand, the style of which matches the engagement ring that Mary Sutherland wore when she called on us" (another detail the deluded woman had not noticed, which again spoke poorly of her observation and general intelligence). "I therefore perceive that you are the stepfather of Miss Mary Sutherland – whom I take it has vanished from your household?"

"All right, all right, Mr. Holmes, yes yes yes," the redheaded man snapped, his distress vanished at once as the false mask it had been, "now where is she? She'd said she would come to you and try to get an answer–"

"Punch and Judy!" Watson swore, with no façade of politeness at all. "You're a _puppet_!" 

"Aren't we all, here?" Windibank retorted. 

(Here I must firmly remind Watson's readers of flesh, who might be tempted to mimic my friend's blunt soldierly speech, that such a term is _only_ acceptable when used by Englishmen of fabric, and even then it is generally used only when we are among our own kind. Taking the Lord and Lady's names in vain is also frowned-upon in polite society.)

I continued to speak, not so much for the dumbfounded Watson's benefit as to let our visitor know that the game was up. "Mr. Windibank. You married a flesh-woman, much older than yourself, not for love but for her money."

The young man cocked his head in a shrug. "So what if I did?"

Watson was still shaking his head in bewilderment. "You wed for money?"

"Why shouldn't I?" Windibank retorted. "The old woman had a business worth a nice bit of brass and I made her sell it. Mending and laundering aren't cheap. A sock's got to get by in the world." 

Watson gasped and I started back at the horrific term. The word "puppet" may be used sparingly among ourselves, but only the vilest people of any material employ that unspeakably vulgar Saxon insult. 

Watson regained his ground first. "Why … why in the world would she marry you?"

Windibank made a disgusted face. "She thought I was _cute_."

"Ugh." Watson made the same expression. 

At that moment I confess that I was in complete agreement with Watson and Windibank. There is a tendency among too many flesh-people to treat their fabricated fellow citizens with patronisation, as if we were merely a series of elaborate but voiceless soft-toys. (I vividly recall my first crime scene where I wished only to find the truth and bring the man's murderer to justice – and my chagrin when the victim's daughter, even through her tears, told everyone how "cunning" I looked.)

But I was not through with Mr. James Windibank. "This marriage also gave you control of her daughter's money – but only as long as she remained under your roof. Mary Sutherland is not an unattractive young woman, and was bound to have a suitor sooner or later. That thought gnawed at you, that fear that you'd lose that yearly gold egg if the goose left one day. So. Your deception, to keep your stepdaughter at home permanently, out of grief and loyalty to a vanished beau that never really existed. And ensuring that her £100 per annum stayed safe in your pockets."

"It was just a joke." Windibank shrugged. "At first. It went a bit far, I'll grant you, but I haven't broken any laws."

I seized Watson just before he could spring at the man, and struggled to hold him back as his hat flew off. "Watson, Watson!"

"You've broken your daughter's _heart_ , you unspeakable creature!" Watson roared, all trace of that momentary fellowship with another fabricated person gone. "She's gone, isn't she? She left when she found out, eh? Ha ha! That's why your daughter is missing!"

With an angry yell Windibank charged us, and I was obliged to kick over the whatnot shelf to stop him as both my hands were fully occupied with holding back an irate Fusilier. 

A shrill bellow, poorly muffled by the ceiling. "What are you doing down there, Mr. Holmes!" 

The clatter and crash of the porcelain keepsakes was rather a giveaway. "Just keeping a client from killing us, Mrs. Hudson!" I called up at the ceiling. "Sorry about your Royal Doultons." 

"Oh bloody hell! Do I have to come down there meself!" 

"We've got him in hand, Mrs. Hudson!" Watson cried, still lunging in my grip to get free and fly at our visitor. 

"It's James Windibank," I called up. "Mary Sutherland's stepfather! He's trying to find where she went!" 

A pause. "…Oooh! She left home, did she? She must have used the reference I gave her."

Windibank went still, staring up at the source of the voice and no longer attempting to clamber over the smashed shelving.

"You didnmmff…" Watson's immediate, honest reply was muffled by my hand on his mouth. 

"A reference?" Windibank's shoe-button eyes gleamed. "Then you know where she went! Old woman, tell me!" 

"Who wants to know?" I never knew our harridan of a landlady could sound so coy and coquettish. 

"The girl's father! Her flesh and blood! I've been worried to death since she disappeared." It was ghastly to hear the honeyed, gentle voice that came out of that conniving fellow. "Please, _please_ , my good woman. She's not well, she tells lies. Help me find my poor deluded girl and bring her home." 

Watson shook with anger, emitting muffled shouts into my hand. 

"Wwwell. If you put it like that. I'm in 221c." Butter wouldn't melt in Mrs. Hudson's mouth. "I can tell you exactly where to go." 

James Windibank gave a triumphant sneer (I was valiantly holding back the raging Watson at this point). "That idiot flesh-girl will be home before sundown, and her money is mine again. And you can't do a thing about it, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, because I haven't broken the law." He deliberately turned his back on us and sauntered out the door, closing it behind him. 

"Watson, Watson!" I turned his head to look him in the eyes. "He's right. He hasn't broken the law." Taking a risk, I took my hand from his mouth. 

"But Holmes, that poor girl!" Watson looked toward the door. "And Mrs. Hudson never gave her a reference! What was that all about?"

I looked up, and indicated that Watson should do the same. "This." 

The noise that we now heard coming from the ceiling was familiar to us – our landlady's harridan-voice. But now it was joined by the yelling of James Windibank, sounding as if he was in pain, and joined by a loud, repeated thumping and crashing. 

I released Watson and began smoothing out his rumpled clothing. "There. You see, my dear felt? The situation is being resolved." 

"Goodness," Watson murmured at a particularly high-pitched shriek from our erstwhile visitor. 

"Hm. Judging from the sound," I cringed at another loud crash, "our landlady is familiar with that new sport from Canada – I believe it is called basketball." 

"Rather rough game, sounds like." Watson shuddered at another whump and a cry of pain from Windibank. "And I thought rugby was brutal."

"I believe what we're hearing is Mr. Windibank providing a substitute for the ball." 

Windibank's yelling suddenly shifted to sounding from outside, almost exactly as if Mrs. Hudson had just flung him out the window. The sound that got louder as it passed our window and ended with a clatter of dustbins below confirmed my theory. "Oh, good show," I murmured. "Two points."

"That's for me whatnot shelf!" Dear old Mrs. Hudson was once more back to her full-throttle screech. "Come back here again and you'll get round two!" 

Martha Hudson has her drawbacks; the woman is humourless, bad-tempered, a quiet drinker, and a loud neighbour. But she is also flesh – a very great deal of it, in fact – and not only does she have no qualms about renting her rooms to fabricated folk, she does not hesitate to use her much greater strength and size to her advantage (as I learned in my first few months of being her often-impoverished tenant). She also has no patience with wicked or stupid men, a trait I share with her. 

The two of us stood at the window and watched Windibank flee. His appearance and stench – causing people of all materials to cry out in disgust and cab-horses to whinny and shy back – let me know that the contents of the dustbin had been courtesy of the cook plucking and gutting chickens for supper that night. 

"I feel much better about the whole thing, Holmes," Watson said. 

I patted his shoulder. I too felt an immense satisfaction at viewing the retreat. "Earlier, I'd been wishing that Mary Sutherland had had an older brother to lay a horsewhip across Mr. Windibank's shoulders for that cruel prank. I was mistaken. It seems she'd just needed a properly-angry aunt or mother to do the deed." 

"She'd needed a better mother than the actual one who went along with her new husband's vicious deception." Watson shook his head again. "Such a lovely young woman, Holmes. She deserves better." 

He too wished to find where Mary Sutherland had gone; unlike her unspeakable stepfather, however, Watson would not press his advantage. I let it be. If she was truly interested in my friend, and her experience did not lead her to paint all men of fabric as villains or fortune-hunters, she knew where to find him. 

*** 

When Watson received a note from Miss Mary Sutherland within the fortnight, letting him know the location of her current residence, I thought the fellow would never stop dashing around the room. As impulsive in love as in duty; as fearless with the fair sex as he was with the enemy. I firmly quelled a pang at the thought of losing my Boswell to a match I did not see as an efficacious one. 

As a loyal friend and not as the consulting detective, I did my duty by Watson. I made sure he was impeccably dressed for his call upon the young woman, straightened his boutonniere, approved of his thrice-groomed moustache, and when the door closed behind him I turned to my experiment table, where a few violent explosions provided a welcome diversion. It was not enough. 

I walked over to my desk and pulled out the drawer, and took a long look at my syringe. 

"That stuff's ghastly for you, Holmes." 

Watson trudged in, removing his hat. Not two hours had passed since he had left. 

I closed the drawer as if I had merely been looking for blotting-paper, and observed. Watson's moustache was ruffled in a particular way, and I knew what had happened. Alas. Like mother, like daughter. 

Watson filled in the story I had already deduced as he poured himself a whisky from our sideboard. "She wouldn't stop _cooing_ over me. I've courted my share of women of both materials on three continents, Holmes, and I know the difference between a flesh-woman who's charmed at my person, and a flesh-woman who sees a chap as a stuffed rabbit from her nursery days." He walked back to our sofa and handed me a glass of the same as he took his chair. "I finally told her that I was very tired from my medical rounds to-day, wished her well in the future, kissed her hand, and left." He took a long draught. 

I followed suit, wincing as the alcohol stung several burns and abrasions left behind by my experiments. "It's for the best that you learned that when you did, Watson. You deserve better."

"Good riddance!" our ceiling bellowed. "Other fish in the sea, Doctor!" 

"Thank you, Mrs. Hudson!" Watson called up toward the sconce.

A knock on our parlour door interrupted our drinks, and the page-boy dashed in with a telegram. 

"Speaking of fish…" I finished reading the summons. "It's that whale who dresses like me. Wants to ask us if we've heard of a Red Herring League. Put your hat back on, old felt!"


End file.
